Polaroid Collection: Update 21

The Hammer Comes Down, Part 1

Monday, June 21, proved an eventful day.

I left the house early in the morning, in order to catch the last two hours of the public showing of the Polaroid Collection selections at Sotheby’s. This final viewing was sparsely attended. Presumably the weekend showings — which included a champagne reception scheduled, oddly, for Father’s Day — had drawn bigger crowds.

So the galleries of Sotheby’s were close to empty, aside from the security staff, myself, and a handful of others. Which is how I preferred it, both for paying close attention to the work and for saying goodbye, probably forever, to this cross-section of the collection.

I don’t get much pleasure from auctions, nor from gallery expos like AIPAD or Photo LA. In the last analysis, I’m more interested in process than in product. Situations like these, in which process not only freezes permanently into product but product becomes merchandise, leave me feeling somehow hollow.

Moreover, there was an elegiac tone to this particular context. After all, it was a display of a collection (or a key portion thereof) about to become something less. In general systems theory, a distinction gets made between a heap and a whole. A heap is an incoherent bunch of stuff, a mere accumulation; a whole is an organic entity made coherent by some connecting thread. With some collections, deaccessioning of sections of the contents wouldn’t matter — the famous Wagstaff Collection at the Getty, for example. That heap of images had no organizing principle save the celebrated “eye of Sam Wagstaff.” It contains many fine images, but as an aggregate it doesn’t rise above its components, or teach us anything about the medium.

The Polaroid Collection, on the other hand, is inarguably a whole, much greater than the sum of its parts. So this auction is an amputation — which doesn’t render the remainder of the collection insignificant or meaningless, but inarguably diminishes it by reducing the complex synergy of its interactive parts.

Indeed, I could feel the synergy leaving the room, almost palpably, as I wandered through the galleries. Here was Robert Heinecken’s tongue-in-cheek instruction sheet for making a manipulated SX-70, for example, more or less cheek by jowl with works by Les Krims and Lucas Samaras, who pioneered that technique, and to whom Heinecken dedicated this piece. Moving from one to the other of these, the experience of any enriched the experience of all. Within 48 hours they’d become permanently isolated from each other. They’re strong enough to stand alone, of course. But they provided each other with such good company that it’s a shame to see them separated forever.

So it goes. Phantom-limb syndrome has begun to set in, but I’m done with mourning. Time to proceed to the tasks of ensuring a suitable permanent home for the remainder of the collection. And, if possible, creating as complete a virtual version of the collection as can be achieved through the combination of existing databases that annotate it.

Speaking for the team of attorneys representing a group of photographers with works in the auction, and negotiating on their behalf with Sotheby’s and the Trustee now in charge of the collection, Sam Joyner had announced on June 20 that “The photographers’ concerns with the auction have now been resolved, and it is hoped that an institutional placement can be found for the remainder of the Polaroid collection.” (As Joyner also said, “The next step is for the photographers, attorneys, Sotheby’s, and the Bankruptcy trustee to work jointly” on placing the collection in an appropriate new home.) What this meant hadn’t become clear at that point.

Chuck Close, "5 C (Self Portrait)," 1979

I headed out for lunch, running into Willie Williams and Stephen Perloff en route. Within the first sentences we exchanged, the word “sad” came out of both their mouths. They kept browsing; I stepped outside into a full-summer Manhattan day, the temperature somewhere in the high 80s. After a salad-bar repast and a big iced coffee, consumed in the light shade at a small plaza nearby, I went back into Sotheby’s to write for an hour on my AlphaSmart, the lightweight word processor I carry for such situations. Then I walked downstairs to meet Andrew Purcell of the BBC, who’d asked to interview me about the collection and the auction.

In the lobby, Dan Abernethy, Sotheby’s Press Officer, introduced himself. He’d promised to find us a quiet space in which to work. He connected me with Purcell a minute or so later, whipped out a short printed statement about the auction, and led us to an isolated temporary storage space with no one around. I read the statement quickly, and was impressed. It said, in full:

John Stoebner, trustee of PBE Corporation, which is the consignor of the Polaroid Collection, has confirmed that nine lots have been withdrawn from the upcoming sale of 482 lots of photographs from the Polaroid Collection at Sotheby’s, to be held on June 21 and 22.

The withdrawn works will be reunited with the balance of the Polaroid Collection currently housed in Somerville, MA, and will further enhance its appeal. The Trustee will be working with Sotheby’s and a representative of certain of the artists in the Polaroid Collection to try and find an institutional home for the remaining approximately 10,000 works in the Polaroid Collection.

• Lot 26, Chuck Close, “5 C (Self Portrait)” ($50/70,000)
• Lot 145, Mary Ellen Mark, “Selected New York Portraits” ($8/12,000)
• Lot 154, Andy Warhol, “Martha Graham” ($2/3,000)
• Lot 170, Laurie Simmons, “Selected Photographs from The Education Project” ($4/6,000)
• Lot 218, Joel Meyerowitz, “Selected Images” ($1,500/2,500)
• Lot 223, Aaron Siskind, “Selected Mexican Portraits” ($1,500/2,500)
• Lot 234, William Wegman, “Selected Figure Studies.” ($5/7,000)
• Lot 445, Various Photographers, “Selected Self-Portraits” ($2/3,000)
• Lot 462, Danny Lyon, “Selected Images” ($5/7,000)

I didn’t have time to contemplate it, or check the lots against the catalogue. Purcell had his audio recorder ready to roll. Abernethy asked me if he could listen in; I saw no reason to shoo him away, as I didn’t plan on saying anything that would intervene in or deprecate the auction, which I considered a done deal at that point. So I agreed. Purcell asked me a dozen questions, which I answered succinctly, and it was a wrap. (To listen to brief extracts from this interview, woven into a larger story, click here.)

Parting company with Abernethy, Purcell and I headed to the auction room on the 7th floor, as I re-read the formal statement. From it I infer the following:

• The withdrawal of these nine lots apparently represents, in part, the negotiated response of Sotheby’s and Trustee John R. Stoebner to the demands made by the photographers and their attorneys, as described in Joyner’s earlier statement. (In his June 22 report for ARTINFO, “Controversial Polaroid Auction Triumphs at Sotheby’s,” Andrew Russeth put it bluntly: “Sotheby’s [was] forced to pull nine lots over concerns about the company’s right to sell the works.” See also Lee Rosenbaum’s June 21 commentary at her CultureGrrl blog, “Polaroid Auction Agreement: A Chuck Close Is Among 9 Works Removed from Sale.”)
• The photographers in question (not by any means all of the photographers represented in the auction, and certainly not all those included in the collection), through their counsel, will have input into the ongoing process of locating a suitable repository for the bulk of the collection, and some voice in that decision.
• Since the Trustee speaks of  “find[ing] an institutional home for the remaining approximately 10,000 works” left, it appears the 4500 works currently at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland are expected to remain there. (The 10,000 cited by the Trustee, plus the 1250 or so just sold by Sotheby’s, plus the 4500 in Lausanne, make approximately 16,000, the current inventory total.)

(More to come.)

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For an index of links to all posts related to this story, click here.